Tuesday, March 08, 2005

THE TRAGICS OF TRINGO

An in-world game developer creates a phenomenon, garners
enormous financial success... and alters the culture of an entire
society, in the process.

So I spent the last year or so predicting to anyone one who'd listen the imminent arrival of the Counter-Strike of Second Life, and when it finally gets here, I'm slow on the uptake.

In the 90's, a kid working out of his parents' basement used the level-editing tools of Half-Life to create the Counter-Strikemod. It got so popular, people began buying the original Half-Life,
just because you needed to install it, to play the kid's game. It got
so popular, in fact, it had a broad impact on multiplayer gaming and
the game industry's attitude toward modding.

In a similar way, my prediction went, a Resident would one day
create a game that's so addictive and popular, people will end up
logging into Second Life just to play it. That will be the tipping
point when things change-- for the Second Life community, and the way
it was perceived by people outside it.

Trouble for me was, all along I had been expecting that game to resemble something like, well, Counter-Strike-- a multiplayer FPS like U:SL, for example. My own bias as a gamer had blinded me to the realization that the Counter-Strike
of Second Life was really this simple, innocuous looking, casual game
which involved nothing more spectacular than a bunch of people sitting
around poking at two dimensional boards.

Oh, I'd noticed its arrival, and mentioned it back in January, in my profile of club culture doyenne Jenna Fairplay--
but that was just in passing. By the time realization finally hit me
full, it had already pushed past that tipping point; in here, and in the world outside.

So it was last week that I met Kermitt Quirk for the first time,
outside his home near the Tringo board which he used to host himself
(though he's been too busy to do that lately). Since he's based in
Australia (while originally from New Zealand), arranging an interview
conducted via a 18 hour time difference was a challenge in itself. But
despite our distance, the quality of his connection is just fine.

"I just got a new graphics card yesterday," he tells me. "Second Life runs smooth as silk now."

"Bought it with your Tringo earnings?"

"Pretty much, yeah," he replies. "Not actually from Second Life
money cashed in, though. I haven't done that yet. I'm gonna just keep
it in there as a nest egg, I think."

But Kermitt Quirk's fiscal success isn't a topic for this entry-- by now, that's already become an item for the mainstream press to report. This is the story behind its creation, and just as
important, the way its unprecedented popularity has impacted Second
Life society-- for better (as many believe), or-- as some strenuously
argue-- for worse.

TRINGO: THE GAMEPLAY

Disarmingly simple, Tringo consists of a display board, to track
scores and pieces in play, and game cards, for the individual players.
After they place their bets in a winner-take-all pot, they compete with
each other to fit their pieces together onto their cards.

"Basically," says Kermitt, playing me in a demonstration round, "as
the pieces show up you need to click your card for where you want to
place them... The idea is to make solid blocks of 2x2, 2x3 or 3x3, then
the scores are 5, 10, 15 points, respectively. You get 10 seconds for
each piece, and lose 7 points if you fail to place one in time. The
best technique seems to be to try and go for as many 2x3s as you can,
and avoid the 2x2s if you can afford to-- or 3x2s, of course."

Heedless, I end up slapping pieces down in a way where it quickly becomes impossible to form a full row.

"Ack, boxed myself out!"

"As you can see," Kermitt says, grinning, "you'll get blocked if you
ain't careful." And reassuringly, "Most people seem to pick it up after
one or two games."

TRINGO: THE CODING

"I'm more of a business programmer really," says Kermitt. (He writes
in-house applications for the Australian arm of a large American
manufacturer.) "Making games is just a hobby, and I really never
thought I could compete with the stuff that's out nowdays. That's where
I like Second Life, 'cause I never really got into programming 3D
stuff, and SL already does all that stuff for me."

I ask him how he scripted the puzzle pieces to randomly display and
then calculate when players have selected the correct one, and then
factor that into the current score.

"It all comes down to bitpattern maths," Quirk explains. "A lotta
people use strings to represent the map of squares, but the string and
list functions are relatively slow. With a bitpattern, it means I can
store the entire 5x5 card grid in one integer. Then it's just a matter
of using bitpattern operators like AND, OR and the left/right shifts to
merge bitpatterns or test for matches, etc. I have [fellow Resident]
David Guillaume to thank for a lotta that. I sorta new this stuff, but
he made it heaps clearer and taught me a lotta tricks I wasn't aware
of...

"And that's the secret to why Tringo is so fast even in a slow sim.
The lines of code it needs to run though are heaps less than if you
used strings and lists. Like a test to see if you can place a
particular piece on the card is basically one line. Of course," he
adds, "when 20-30 people turn up for an event with all their
attachments and such the sim still tends to suffer, unfortunately."

TRINGO: THE ECONOMIC MODEL

Quirk developed Tringo over last Christmas, and put a copyright to
it (in the release notes, "Kermitt Quirk" is named as the rights
holder), just before New Year's. He sensed he had a phenomenon on his
hands before the official release.

"I ran it as a Beta for a few days. That was in the Barnyard run by
Omar Drago. And even then the word seemed to spread really quick. After
I released it for sale, it just went nuts, with people buying it over
the first couple of weeks... I broke the one million [Linden] dollar
profit mark just a couple of days ago."

At L$15,000 a copy, as of last week he's so far sold 69, primarily to Residents who want to make money hosting Tringo matches.

"And all it took was a couple of weeks during my holidays," he says,
"and a bit of customer support." (About five hours weekly, by his
estimate, helping Tringo owners with technical glitches.)

"Actually more for me, 'cause then you need to convert that to
Aussie dollars." That's to say, the currently weak American dollar on
the international market means more purchasing power for non-US
Residents, when they convert from Linden Dollars to US dollars and then
to their own currency.

"Well, [the Australian dollar's] actually been dropping recently,"
he amends. "Another of the reasons I haven't tried to cash it in yet."

TRINGO: THE SOCIAL CATALYST-- AND THE CONTROVERSY

"So why do you think Tringo became so big in here?" I ask its creator.

"Mainly I think because the concept is so simple that people can
pick it up real quick and be winning after even only two or three
games," Quirk tells me. "The way I see it is that you could play a
lotta games that are in SL anywhere, if you wanna play them alone. I
think it's much better to get people together in groups so they can
chat while they play."

An indication of its success is not just found in the number of
Tringo-related events (which on some days make up more than 25% of
total events), but in the vertiable subculture of Tringo groups
Residents have started up. There are at least 21 of them now, with
names like Tringo Busters, Tringo Sluts, and Tringo Zombies. In
essence, they're analagous to gamer clans and informal leagues, started
up by enthusiasts of the game. (Somewhat related to this, Kermitt is
trying to collect screenshots of Tringo as it's played in the dozens of
locations and environments throughout the world. "Might put the word
out for people to send photos to me," he asks me, "'cause I'll miss
most of them with the time difference.")

"I dunno if I'd call them fans," says Quirk. "I don't get packs of
people running after me or anything. But if I turn up to Tringo games
people seem very amazed to actually meet 'the creator'. But then," he
adds, grinning, "they start cursing me when the right pieces don't come
out for them."

Just as unsurprisingly, Tringo has its share of Resident detractors, who believe the game has come to overwhelm their society.

In a testament to its influence, Jinny Fonzarelli,
a British Philosophy/Theology student and Resident who runs Thinkers, a
group devoted to discussing political and metaphysical topics, now
plans to dedicate an upcoming debate to "The Tringoization of Society".
Which would be, if you like, a cultural debate held within a game about
the mini-game that's beginning to impact the community of the larger
game.

"It ain't really Tringo I object to," Fonzarellis tells me. "It's
the fact that it's everywhere, all the time. Games are meant to be an
escape, not where you live. Between Tringo and pointless contests, I
know many people feel their Second Life has been immensely devalued."

Eboni Khan (a Resident I'll be profiling in a future entry) helps
run the opulent Beverly Hills resort simulator, and regrets her
experience with the game.

"I brought Tringo here," says Eboni, "which I now hate. People just
leech off Tringo, and they seem so addicted... and people come, just
play Tringo, suck out money, and don't even look around the sim. Sim
owners have Tringo to attract people to the sims [but] Tringo players
rarely look at the sims. They just go from game to game. If their
friends IM them that there are big pots at the next place, they leave.
And they don't chat, because they are too into the game. So it's not
even social, which I don't like."

I bring these objections up with the game's inventor.

"That's a tricky one," Quirk acknowledges. "I have had a few people
ask me if I was going to remove it from sale, because I was flooding
the market... that may be fair for them, but what about other people
that wanted to buy it and couldn't afford it [when it was on sale]? And
when it comes down to it," he continues, "if people really didn't want,
it they wouldn't support it."

As for it hurting socialization, he says, "[T]hat depends how
seriously you take it, I suppose. From my experience with Tringo events
it just isn't like that. There's always someone chatting even if they
end up missing pieces because of it. You could argue that a [in-world]
club is more sociable, but then people are just away from keyboard all
the time [at clubs], so isn't that just as bad? At least Tringo keeps
people active in world."

You can pretty much find a game of Tringo in Second Life at any
hour. Even at 3AM, which is when I found a match going strong at
Jvizzle Jacques' Ice Dragon Resorts, currently the world's most popular
site, located in the winter simulator of Eaton. On what used to be a
hill of driven snow now stands Jacques' raucous mini-mall of stores,
floating billboard cubes, a ceaselessly blaring stream of pop music--
and at the center of it all, the Tringo game room, done up in chrome
and flashing colored lights.

When I arrive, the players (including a leggy brunette supermodel, a
humanoid lizard, and a punk rock demon) are waiting on game host Ezri
Martin to start a new round, but she's momentarily away from the
keyboard.

"SORRY," she says after a brief delay. "JUST ATTENDING TO MY DAUGHTER."

And after taking bets to the winner's pot, another round begins.

For the most part, this is an international crowd of players, with a
few in Australia and least one in France. ("Midday," the Frenchwoman
shouts. "WOOOHOOO!")

"Late night international tragics!" Magenta Eldritch adds from the bleachers.

"GREAT HEADLINE FOR YOU THERE, HAMLET," says Ezri. As it turns out,
she's talking in ALL CAPS not to shout, but according to house policy.
At the Ice Dragon Resorts, Tringo hosts must always speak in caps, to
distinguish themselves from their players.

"IN AUSTRALIA," Ms. Martini continues, "WHEN SOMEONE IS ADDICTED TO
A SPORT OR PASSTIME, THEY ARE REFERRED TO AS A 'TRAGIC'. E.G., A
CRICKET TRAGIC, A FOOTBALL TRAGIC. AND NOW-- A TRINGO TRAGIC!"

Meanwhile, the time for this round is winding down, and players are counting their scores.

"Crushed me like a bug," groans Magenta.

"Sometimes you are the bug, sometimes the windshield!" offers Evan Yaffle, philosophically.